Lula trades final Brazil election debate for popular podcast - Valor International

President Lula has decided to skip the final presidential debate before Sunday’s election and appear instead on one of Brazil’s biggest podcasts, as his campaign seeks to reach younger voters and a more active social-media audience.

His main rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party, has confirmed he will attend the TV Globo debate despite Lula’s absence. The debate is scheduled to begin at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, while Lula’s interview on the Flow Podcast starts 45 minutes earlier.

Lula will thus end the first round without having taken part in a debate with his rivals.

The president decided not to attend on the advice of aides. In recent days, senior members of his campaign tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to take part.

Amid indications that President Lula would stay away, Flávio had also acknowledged that he might skip the last debate before the first round. On Sunday, he said his only “opponent in this campaign” was Lula, despite other right-wing candidates in the presidential race.

Lula’s aides say concern that he would become the main target of attacks from his rivals weighed on the decision.

The president has privately pointed to previous winning candidates who skipped debates. He has cited Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who won the presidency in the first round in 1994 and was reelected in the first round in 1998 after skipping major debates. Lula has also noted that Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 election without facing his rivals in the final televised debates.

Allies privately acknowledge that President Lula tends to give lengthy answers that do not fit comfortably within the tight time limits for responses and rebuttals in televised debates. They also point to what they viewed as weak performances in some first-round debates in 2022, when Lula ultimately defeated Bolsonaro.

Some Lula allies also believe candidates polling well behind the two frontrunners would use Thursday’s debate largely to attack the president.

Lula’s campaign is instead trying to reach a younger audience active on social media, a segment where his allies believe he still faces resistance.

That led Lula to choose Flow, one of Brazil’s largest podcasts, with more than 6 million subscribers. Its long, informal interview format generally involves less direct confrontation than candidates face in televised debates.

Lula appeared on Flow during the 2022 campaign, drawing what was then the largest audience in the program’s history.

The livestream surpassed 1 million simultaneous viewers, breaking the previous record of 570,000, set when Bolsonaro, then running for reelection, appeared on the program.

A Quaest analysis at the time found 479,000 social-media mentions of Lula’s appearance from 170,000 users. The analysis found that 43% of posts about the interview were classified as positive.

This article was translated from Valor Econômico using an artificial intelligence tool under the supervision of the Valor International editorial team to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to our editorial standards. Read our Editorial Principles.